The ugliness

So there I was, bewildered, sleep deprived, starving and in shock. Thoughts raced through my head. Why was Will’s dad with him? Why will he not say anything? What that the hell is happening? The answers were ugly.

As I sat in my car looking at William in his car, I begged him to say something, anything. Before he could, his dad said something, anything and everything. First he told me that William was done with me, that he did not love me anymore and that he did not want to be with me, that our relationship was over and he was taking Will back to Philly with him. Side note- Will and I had just resigned a six month lease not three weeks before all of this. Then when I brought up the fact that I had just found out that I was pregnant, William’s father said and I will NEVER forget these words, “We don’t even know that it is his!” Its funny how one sentence, a subject and a verb splashed with a pronoun can do so much damage. I looked at Will almost begging him to stop all of the venom that was being spewed at me and yet there was nothing. At this point, I began to totally fall apart. It was not the kind of crying that you knew would make you feel better in the end, no it was the kind of crying that came from the depths of your soul, the kind you thought would never end. I called my mom because I had now encountered something the likes of which I could not even handle. She cancelled all of her hearings and came immediately.

So now, William and his father began tearing through our apartment madly grabbing anything that they could while I watched in agony. My mother asked Will’s father to let us speak alone, after all we had just spent years living together and we were adults, there had to be a better way than this. She was wrong. William continued to look at me, almost zombie like. No real emotion or soul behind his eyes, just this vacant stare. I begged him to talk to me, to tell me why and how he could do something like this. And when I say begged, I mean it. I got down on my knees, putting any pride or self-respect I had left to the side to show him that I was serious but anything I said no matter how heart-felt was met with snide remarks from his father and little to no response from Will. It was like he had been brain washed. There were phrases he just kept repeating over and over again but no real feeling behind it. As I tried desperately to get through to him, my mother attempted to contain his father outside so that we could talk. That did not last very long at all. She came bursting through the door saying that she could not stand to be there another moment. Apparently the blame game had started outside. My mother told his father that she did not appreciate the things that he had said to me and in return his father said that he did not appreciate me having an affair. Right, I had an affair. Someone had fallen in love with me. Nothing ever happened between the two of us other than him expressing his feelings for me. But did William’s father even bother to fact check, of course not. My mother knew the truth and said that that was ridiculous and that if he really wanted to get into it, she did not appreciate William spitting in my face two years prior to this. If you can not see the trend, things were spiraling downwards at an exponential pace. The ugliness was all around me and I could do was cry. Once my mother and I realized that this was indeed happening and there was nothing we could do, I fell to the floor and watched what had taken me over three years to build be destroyed in two hours.

I asked William what we were going to do about the baby and his response was that he did not want anything to do with it. It was all up to me. What do you even say to that? The kicker was that Will had always wanted kids and it was a point of contention because I did not until now. I wanted to have this one. Over the course of our relationship we had lost two others and I did not want to go through the pain of that again. Silly me, I thought he would be excited. I thought he would be happy that I finally wanted all the things he did but everything had changed in 48 hours. Now I was just some girl in some town that he had lived in for five years and he was done with it. He was leaving everything and wanted nothing to keep him tied to this place and this life. I hugged him or rather tried to hug him, in the very least I did not want to leave things so nasty. I loved him with all of my heart and I could not stand the thought of never seeing him again so I continuously tried to embrace him. He kept packing.

As they packed up all of his clothing and other personal belongings, I remember they had these very nonchalant conversations, almost as if it was totally normal to break someone’s heart, leave them pregnant and with an apartment and cats and berate them mercilessly. It was like it was something that occurred every day. I distinctly remember there was even joking. I kept feeling the sense that I had entered some alternate reality or dimension and it all felt very wrong. After two hours, they had most of his stuff out and in his car leaving me with everything else to take care of at some point. As he went for the cat, I tried to stop him but unfortunately she was his cat before this relationship so there was really nothing I could say to stop him. I disagreed with him taking her away from her brothers whom she loved but his response was that he just wanted to take one of the other cats as well. I could barely believe that now we were bargaining with our children. I finally put my foot down and told him I thought he had taken quite enough from me and that was it. I was then told if I really loved him, I would let him take Christian. If I really loved him I would let him take our other cat? If I really loved HIM! I was being crushed and destroyed and I was still expected to act out of love when all that was being shown to me was hatred? They told me what a good home he would have and how much space there was. A good home? Our definitions of a good home, I was sure at this point were very different so I declined. Will was walking out on every responsibility he had and I was supposed to trust that he would take care of my babies, no.

The boy cats watched as their sister was crated and out the door. William just waved to me and then he was gone………..

I described this incident in-depth not to blame or make William and his father appear a certain way but rather to express why the event was so traumatic. There was pain and loss on so many levels that it truly was a tragedy. I felt betrayed, abandoned, disparaged, unloved and confused. Mostly though I felt like my life was over. I had lived and breathed for him. Every thing I had done for the past three years was with the belief that we were meant to be together. I loved him that much. I had tolerated things that I never thought I would because I loved him that much and now it was gone. My heart was gone. My reason for being was gone, everything was ripped away in an instant.

In the weeks to follow, I would only hear from William four times. One was a text the next day asking me to take care of our boys and that he was going to pay to break our lease all I had to do was sign a piece of paper, also that our relationship meant a lot to him and he loved me and that he was on his was on his way out-of-town. I did not hear from him again until weeks later after I had sent him texts, emails, songs, poems all expressing my love for him and the immense amount of grief I felt. I got two emails, both justifying what he did and blaming me for things I had done to cause this. I apologized over and over again for a while believing that perhaps I did cause this and it was my fault or that there was a justification for what he did. Not once did he apologize, not once did he ask about our baby or our cats, not once did he even ask how I was. No, this was all about him. What he was going through, how he felt. I was just as insignificant in our end as I had been all along even more so now that he was thousands of miles away. Its been six or seven weeks now and I have yet to hear his voice or have a real conversation with him. And yet I do not blame him for what he did. I do not hate him or wish him ill. I simply pray every day that he will wake up and become more aware of his actions and how they affect others and that our lives are not meant to be spent being selfish and self-serving but rather to love one another and live up to our potential as humans. And this is what good has come from such an ugly, awful event, the knowledge that we must live in a space of compassion, love and forgiveness. We can not control the actions of others. We can control our actions towards others and as long as we act out of a place of love, we are in our highest truth and power.

You can not blame someone for being where they are in their evolution or devolution as it may be…………………

And thus ends the ugliness and begins a new chapter…… The journey towards healing.